Amsterdam’s Largest Park Will Turn Blue, Thanks to Steve McQueen

Next month, the artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen will fix all the light bulbs in Vondelpark, Amsterdam’s largest public park, so that they burn blue instead of white, the artist’s New York dealer Marian Goodman announced in a press release today.

The installation, Blues Before Sunrise, will modify the park’s 275 lamps and is presented by the city’s Stedelijk Museum. In the release, Stedelijk director Ann Goldstein sounds thrilled:

“McQueen’s remarkable Blues Before Sunrise will not only alter our perception of the Vondelpark, it will also heighten our sensation of routine activity and transform a common space into an uncanny, beautiful experience, at once powerfully present and knowingly elusive.”

The piece takes its name from a 1934 blues standard written by Leroy Carr.